Washington’s players and coaches got a taste of Penn State’s raucous crowds at the annual White Out game, and when the Huskies learned this summer that they would face the Nittany Lions in the White Out, the team was ready.
Pat Chun, Washington’s athletic director who worked at Ohio State University from 1997 to 2012, immediately realized that this game would present many logistical challenges.
“Everyone wants to play on the big stage. Everyone wants to play in a unique environment,” said Chun The athlete at Big Ten Media Days last month in Indianapolis. “This is the only time a year an opponent in all of college football experiences a whiteout, and how lucky are we to be able to bring our university into this environment? That’s one of the reasons we wanted to go to the Big Ten, to experience these kinds of things.”
Washington linebacker Carson Bruener, who was born in Pittsburgh where his father, Mark, is a scout for the Steelers, said his relatives already had a trip planned. He said they secured an Airbnb for the weekend and have heard stories of clogged traffic in and out of Happy Valley. Participating in one of college football’s most unique stadium traditions is a perk of this expanded conference that stretches as far east as Piscataway, New Jersey, and as far west as Eugene, Oregon.
GO DEEPER
Penn State hosts white-out game against Washington: Did the Nittany Lions do everything right?
This fall, the Big Ten will have tailgating and sailgating, where Midwestern snowflakes meet California sunshine. Along with the pomp, new encounters and varied backdrops will make for a season full of travel mishaps and lessons learned. Teams will finally implement the travel logistics that staff and athletic directors have been preparing for over the past few years.
“It’s real, and because it’s new, it’s going to be different,” Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel said of the Big Ten’s travel. “The programs have done the right thing by communicating how other people are traveling, and maybe traveling a day or two earlier, and I think that will help. … I think it’s just a matter of how you prepare beforehand to help athletes, coaches and everybody involved.”
Team nutritionists have studied their players’ circadian rhythms, and staff have studied the length of airport runways. They have had to decide whether to drive football equipment across the country or pack it in the belly of the plane. Site visits have also been conducted, with team staff visiting opposing teams’ venues to look at details such as the hotel, the opposing team’s locker room and the visiting team’s sideline. Whether it’s better to fly back to campus immediately after a game or stay at the hotel and fly the next morning has also been up for debate.
“I think this year we’re going to gather a lot of information and collect data,” Chun said. “We’re going to do a lot of interviews with student-athletes, talk to them and see what works best. I think everyone is in the same boat and everyone wants to do the best for their student-athletes. I think it allows all the schools to share some of the best practices after the year, things they would do differently, and I think as a league we’ll all get better at it.”
We know you’ve been waiting for this…
“Maps” is here and it is beautiful. #B1GWelcome pic.twitter.com/vPfVeEdonn
— Big Ten Conference (@bigten) 2 August 2024
In a sport riddled with paranoia about any advantage, perceived or otherwise, will athletic departments be willing to share information about when to travel or how to get in and out of remote college towns?
“I think when it comes to the health and wellness of student-athletes, everyone is always willing to share information,” Chun said. “It’s different when it comes to competition. Health and wellness is what drives this league, so we will always share information that will help improve their health and wellness. We will not sacrifice that.”
The UCLA football team will travel the most miles of the 18 Big Ten teams this fall, an estimated 22,048 miles, according to Bookies’ Bill Speros. Washington is second with 17,522 miles. UCLA quarterback Ethan Garbers, a native of Newport Beach, Calif., said he has never played in the snow. He hopes that changes this year. Garbers said DeShaun Foster and the rest of the Bruins’ coaching staff have told players their schedule can help prepare them for life in the NFL. If NFL players don’t complain about playing all over the country, why should they?
When Garbers was reminded that there are no mandatory credits or study hours in the NFL, he smiled.
“That’s true. I’ve graduated now,” Garbers said with a laugh. “I’ll take a few courses, but nothing too difficult.”
The expanded conference means coast-to-coast flights, which has always been a challenge for Penn State’s football team. Penn State has contacted NFL teams, including the Philadelphia Eagles, over the past two years to determine best practices for coast-to-coast travel. To travel to USC in October, the Nittany Lions will drive 100 miles to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and fly out of that airport on a Thursday — a day earlier than usual, Penn State athletic director Patrick Kraft said. The Nittany Lions will travel 8,602 miles this season, sixth-most in the conference.
“It’s not the easiest place to get to, and it’s not the easiest place to get out of,” James Franklin said of State College. “Being a school in the Northeast, that brings some challenges. I think Rutgers has similar challenges, but they have bigger airport options that we don’t have.”
As one college football head coach joked this summer, Penn State’s true home-field advantage might be that it’s not easy to get to Beaver Stadium. Chun and Washington head coach Jedd Fisch both said they’ve been on planes diverted from State College to Harrisburg.
“We’re confident we can land a 737 there,” Fisch said. “You don’t want to bring us bad luck and send us to Harrisburg, do you?”
As UCLA and Washington have already learned from coaches who have been to State College, the runway at State College Regional Airport, which is four miles from Beaver Stadium, is not suitable for certain types of aircraft, such as the Boeing 737-800, 737-900 and 757-300. These planes can take off and land in State College, but not without certain concessions. Cross-country flights must stop and refuel, or football teams must take a smaller plane if they want to travel nonstop. That means they must either take two planes to land in State College, or take a larger plane, fly to Harrisburg and drive the 100 miles to State College from there.
Washington is considering using two planes for the 5 1/2-hour trip to State College, but Chun understands each week will bring different challenges. The Huskies expect to leave one day early if the game against Penn State is in the evening and two days early if the game is in the afternoon. The Huskies play at Rutgers on Friday night, so they’ll have to adjust for that, too, Chun said. If they play at Iowa and the game is during the day, they would leave two days early, Fisch said.
“I coached in the NFL for 14 years, I coached in LA and I coached on the East Coast,” Fisch said. “When we hired our head athletic trainer, who was in the NFL for 23 years, he was the head coach of the Cardinals for 15 years, so he’s been through those trips. … You’re never really 100 percent sure. I could tell you stories of times we went out the day before and won by 30 and times we went out two days before and lost by 30 and vice versa. The best saying is: How do you win on the road? You bring a good team. That’s the key, not the time you get there.”
(Photo: Matthew O’Haren / USA Today)
